Mountains and sky merged into one. Frost and wind cut to the bone. Across the vast northern plain, heaven and earth had turned to white.
Snow fell in torrents as if the sky itself had capsized. Ancient pines, centuries old, swayed on the verge of collapse. Layer upon layer of frost accumulated, as though determined to bend every living thing beneath its weight.
The great river wound across the land in boundless coils, but winter had locked it fast. Like a silver dragon caged, it could no longer surge and twist, only press itself flat beneath the weight of white mountains.
Whoooooshh
A desolate wail of wind came howling out of the far north, churning the clouds, slamming into anything in its path.
The gale swept everything before it.
It passed over distant mountain ranges, over abandoned towns, battlefields stained red beneath the snow, the bodies of the fallen, and finally, it swept down over a column of figures moving fast across the frozen plain.
Beneath a thundering roll of hoofbeats, a mounted escort drove several large wagons at full gallop.
Ice and snow cut like blades, that brittle, merciless brightness, cold enough to freeze the marrow. The trees lining both banks of the river stood encased in crystal, silent and severe.
The riders tore through the white expanse, sending ice crystals shivering to the ground as they plunged into the hushed stillness of dusk.
Their destination lay ahead: a great city backed against the mountains, at the northern frontier — Mingshan.
Outside Mingshan. The refugee camp.
A handful of gaunt figures crouched around a bonfire, eyes fixed hungrily on the large pot bubbling above the flames.
The water inside was nearly boiling. The smell of meat drifted out in waves, drawing passersby to slow their step, nostrils flaring, eyes sharpening with want.
The refugees squatting by the fire made idle conversation, tossing words back and forth about nothing in particular. Anyone who drifted too close got a sharp curse hurled at them; anyone foolish enough to answer back found the whole group rising to their feet.
They gripped crude wooden spears, eyes sweeping the area with a predator's vigilance, cold, pale green in the firelight. Most people gave this corner of the camp a wide berth.
The broth came to a rolling boil. The smell of meat grew richer. They swallowed, lips wet with anticipation, their eyes and the restless hands poking at the fire growing more urgent by the moment.
Then the earth began to tremble. Black shapes in the distance, moving fast, drawing closer.
By the time these starving people lifted their heads, iron-shod hooves had already smashed through the flimsy wooden fencing. A horse cleared the makeshift shelter in a single leap and landed squarely before them.
The refugees scattered with screams. The pot had no such luck. A hoof came down, crushing the fire, overturning the pot, sending liquid spraying in all directions.
The carefully tended broth sloshed across the frozen ground and was gone.
From the upturned pot tumbled a lump of meat , soft and falling apart, identifiable only by the shape of its bones as a rat's leg.
The next hoof reduced it to pulp.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Not far away, in one of the makeshift shelters, a young man's ears pricked up.
He was lean, almost skeletal, but his frame was large and solid, like a starved tiger, all sharp angles and barely contained danger. He had been crouched in focused attention over an earthenware pot on a simple clay stove, a few rough medicinal herbs scattered around him, the bitter smell of a decoction rising from the simmering liquid.
At the sound of hooves, he straightened slowly and turned toward the noise.
His hair hung loose and tangled. A blade was slung at his hip. Thin flesh lay taut over sharp bones, and though he looked half-wasted, there was an edge to him. angular, keen, unyielding.
His eyes were startlingly alive, his breathing slow and deep. Both fists were clenched, the knuckles crosshatched with small scars and calluses.
Anjing watched the mounted convoy push into the refugee camp, unblinking.
These were tall, magnificent northwestern war horses, long-necked, powerfully built, their broad chests and iron hooves capable of shattering anything that dared stand in their way.
They rode to the centre of the camp. The riders dismounted and began unloading cargo from the wagons, laying out the beginnings of a rough encampment.
"Jing'er *cough, cough* what are you looking at?"
A woman's voice, from behind him.
"Mother."
Anjing turned.
She was a tall woman, and there was still something distinguished about her. In this frost-ravaged northern frontier it was hard to find anyone who wasn't gaunt and hollow, but though she was thin, her eyes held a fierce brightness.
Those bright eyes, however, belonged to a woman who could only lie propped on a blanket, even a single sentence left her gasping, coughing.
She had not always been this weak. Five days ago, fleeing across the wasteland toward Mingshan, their column of refugees had been hit by bandits on horseback. She had killed seven of them. But in the final exchange with the bandit chief, she had miscalculated by a fraction. One palm strike to the chest had ruptured the meridians around her lungs.
Anjing had finished his own opponent and thrown himself at the bandit chief, bearing him to the ground, strangling him into unconsciousness with his bare hands. Then he had seized the man's blade and taken his head, and that had been enough to scatter the rest.
But the damage to his mother was severe. Her inner breath was in chaos, her breathing laboured. In this camp with neither medicine nor food, how many days she had left was anyone's guess.
"I'm going to see if I can get some food."
Anjing turned back toward the convoy. Without thinking, he licked his lips, too cold and cracked to be moistened, the movement only split them further, and blood welled up. He licked that away too.
When he spoke, his voice was slow, but certain. "That convoy is carrying grain. Rice."
"And perhaps medicine."
"My boy..." His mother's eyes dimmed. She understood, he was looking for a way to save her.
But she knew her own body. Without a powerful restorative medicine to heal her lungs and reorder her vital energy, she had three days at most. In this frost-plagued, war-torn frontier, even the most well-intentioned relief mission would never carry medicine of that quality. She did not want her son to exhaust himself chasing the impossible. She wanted him here, with her, in whatever time remained.
But Anjing had always had his own mind. He read her meaning before she could speak, and cut in gently, lifting a bowl toward her: "Mother. Drink your medicine first."
"White-spot herb, chopped and simmered with old-breath root. Simple, but it should help restore some vitality and ease your breathing."
She took the bowl and drank it down in one go. Bitter as it was, the hot liquid settled in her chest and some small warmth returned to her.
By the time she lowered the bowl, Anjing had already turned and was walking toward the convoy.
Anjing was no ordinary boy from the northern frontier.
From early childhood, strange dreams came to him.
Towering buildings, countless as trees in a forest, steel and concrete, each one dwarfing every structure in the county combined. Iron birds his dreaming mind called airplanes, climbing straight into the heavens, streaking across the sky faster than any living creature. And bombs. Bombs of a destruction so total that each one, on detonation, became its own small sun — hundreds of them, thousands, blooming across the earth until the world was nearly ash.
The empire of Dachen placed great stock in heavenly destiny, and the notion of stars descending to be reborn as mortals was well established. Anjing had awakened young, what people called 'ancestral wisdom', a fragment of knowledge from some prior life, and the gifts that followed were unmistakable, in both learning and combat. His family took it as confirmation: a star had come down into their midst. They gave him every advantage they could.
But even the sharpest mind and the strongest body cannot hold back the great frost calamities sweeping the northern frontier, nor the vast armies of the northern tribes massing to push south. Anjing was still a boy. There were things beyond his reach, and his mother's injury was proof of that.
But what could be done.
However slim the chance, Anjing would fight for it. He would cure his mother.
Now, drawing close to the convoy's encampment, he heard a voice ring out, full-throated and commanding.
"Listen up!"
Among the mounted riders, one figure stood out: a one-eyed man, richly dressed, bellowing over the crowd.
On either side of him, the other riders sat armoured and bladed, expressions flat and lethal, their eyes sweeping the surrounding refugees, people who didn't dare come closer, with undisguised contempt.
"My master, in his great compassion, cannot bear to watch you wretches die outside the city walls! He now offers grain in exchange for service, positions in his household!"
"Children and young people only. Fourteen and under preferred, though sixteen and under may qualify, provided the right aptitude!"
"For each one who meets the requirements: one dou of rice!"
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1. One dou of rice: A traditional dry measure of roughly ten litres. the equivalent would feel anachronistic, and the unit itself conveys the cold transactional arithmetic of the exchange.